Mastodawn

Okay so like.. anyone else had the (dis)pleasure of working in a building with one of these fucking things? XD

For those that don't know, it's a Hirsch ScramblePad reader!

When you scan your access card, the pad lights up and rapidly randomizes all the numbers on the keypad several times before giving you a final layout to use to enter your PIN.

They also had an extremely small viewing window that meant anyone not immediately in front of the keypad (or standing to the side) /shouldn't/ be able to see the numbers on the pad, thus shouldn't be able to figure out your PIN.

Hoooowever, at least for myself, I couldn't ever successfully enter my PIN on the first go from fumbling reading the numbers properly XD

Also, here’s a good visual demonstration of how they work: https://youtu.be/aKK6tlvxios.

You present your access card to the reader, it scrambles the location of the numbers across the pad several times, then stops on a final location for all the numbers.

That’s also where I’d fumble by getting an anxiety spike seeing the numbers move rapidly and forgetting / mistyping the PIN xD

Starting Scramblepad PIN Entry with an RFID Proximity Token

YouTube

@crashdoom Hard mode: Scramble after every key hit

@Doridian Congratulations, you made me check the dipswitch configuration on them, lmao.. THANKFULLY, they didn’t add that— It’d be hella secure, but fml noooooo xD

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Doridian 6d ago

@crashdoom If you want another random idea I had seeing these: Why not make every key a fingerprint reader, and only take keypresses on a match?

I'd build one myself but I don't think I can get clear fingerprint reader modules anywhere to do it with x3

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l4p1n 6d ago

@crashdoom @Doridian My brain would crash and need a reboot to recover from the situation 😂

@l4p1n @Doridian me IRL every time I had to get into my work building each day lmao

[randomizes] “Yeah, PIN is— is… uhh… fuck.” 😵‍💫

It shouldn’t be that hard only randomizing once lmao tho, every time would be.. impossible